The present invention relates to an infant care apparatus and, more particularly, to a grommet for introducing tubes and wires through a wall of an infant care apparatus.
There are, of course, many devices or apparatus for the care of an infant and, among such differing such apparatus, there are infant warmers that are basically planar surfaces on which the infant is positioned and which planar surfaces generally include side guards to keep the infant safely within the confines of the apparatus.
There are also infant incubators and which are more confined enclosures that contain the infant within an enclosed controlled atmosphere that provides heat to the infant and also may provide control of humidity in the enclosed environment.
With either type of infant care apparatus as well as potentially other types of apparatus that may provide a means of care to an infant, the apparatus generally includes a plurality of side walls that are used to enclose the infant. With an incubator, the walls fully enclose the infant and surround the infant on all four sides to provide the protective environment within the infant compartment. With an infant warmer, the infant is more likely positioned upon a planar surface with an overhead radiant heater providing infrared radiation to impinge upon the infant and the walls are more in the shape of protective side guards to enclose the and keep the infant safely restrained on the surface. Such protective side guards of an infant warmer are generally, as with an incubator, also positioned along all of the entire periphery of the planar surface and removable to a position enclosing the infant on the surface or can be moved to an open position where more access can be gained to the infant. An example of such side guards in an infant warmer is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,474,517 of Falk et al.
For purposes of the present description of the invention, although somewhat different in actual functioning, the walls of an infant incubator and the protective guards of an infant warmer will hereinafter be referred to generically as walls and the applicability of the present invention to both types of infant care apparatus will be readily seen, as well as the applicability to other types of similar apparatus.
In dealing with infants in either type of equipment, there is a need to provide monitors or supply fluids to the infant and thus, it is necessary to have a plurality of wires, cables and/or various tubes that are attached to the infant or located near the infant where some device attached to the cable of tubing can be easily accessed to administer treatment to the infant. One typical tube used for the present purpose is a ventilator tube that is affixed to the infant and is used to access the infant to ventilate the infant and therefore it is desirable to be able to position the ventilator tube as it passes through the wall of the incubator or warmer to be at a certain height above the infant bed depending upon the location of the infant and the tilt position of the bed. Thus, in the case of an incubator, the tubes and wires must pass through the walls of the incubator that enclose the infant and, in the case of an infant warmer, the same need is present, that is, it is convenient to provide a management of the various tubes and wires to insure they are properly affixed to the apparatus and yet can be individually passed through the walls in a logical and controlled manner such that the ends of the wires or tubes are affixed to or near the infant.
At the present, there are a variety of devices that are located in the walls of the incubator to allow the wires or tubes to pass through the wall. One of such devices is a slitted grommet where the wires or tubes are passed through a slit formed in a flexible plastic grommet. The grommet is preferable oriented in the upper portion of the wall such that he wires of tubes can be introduced into the vertically oriented slit by passing the wires or tubes downwardly into the slit that is accessible through the upper edge of the wall.
While reasonably suited to the purpose, the grommet must be positioned in the wall of the infant care apparatus, as explained, so that the slit is vertically oriented to allow the introduction or wires and tubes into the slit through the upper edge of the walls. Such orientation, however, creates an inherent problem in that all of the wires and tubes end up at the bottom of the slit and become tangled with each other. Thus, the wire and tubes are entangled and the management of the individual wires or tubes becomes difficult to manage in the event one or more of the tubes or wires needs to be moved or removed from the grommet. In addition, there is no selectivity available to readily enable the user to locate a tube, such as a ventilator tube, at a desired height above the infant bed, particularly with an incubator bed that tilts.
Thus, it would be advantageous to provide a grommet that would allow the introduction of a plurality of wires and tubes through the walls of an incubator by passing the wire or tubes within a vertically oriented slit in the grommet and yet would allow each of the wires or tubes to be individually isolated so as to maintain order among the wire and tubes as well as provide some selectivity to the user to locate a tube or wire at differing heights above the infant bed.
Accordingly, the present invention relates to an infant care apparatus that has various walls to contain the infant and has a grommet that is provided in at least one of those walls to allow the wires and the tubes to pass through the wall to the interior of the infant compartment to be used with monitors or other devices used in the caring of the infant. In the present invention, the grommet includes a slit through which the wires and tubes can be positioned and the slit is generally elongated and oriented in a generally vertical position in the wall.
Accordingly, the wires and/or tubes can be moved along the slit as in the conventional grommets, however, there is also provided a plurality of spaced thickened ridges, preferably formed in the flexible plastic grommet material and which thickened ridges create spaced areas where the wires and tubes can be supported by the thickened ridges so as to separate the wires and tubes as desired by the user.
The thickened ridges still allow the wires and the tubes to be slid past the ridges by an extra effort on the part of the user so that the user can selectively move the particular wire or tube to be supported on the desired thickened ridge and the user can force the wire or the tube past the ridge to arrive at the selected location of the desired ridge. Thus, the flexible plastic grommet serves to create spaced areas where wire and tubes can be managed and located independent of each other.
As one of the major advantages of such selective vertical positioning, the user can place a ventilator tube that is positioned in the mouth of the infant in a vertical desire position so as to be convenient to the infant and maintained in that position. In the event, however, that the infant bed is tilted, the position of the ventilator tube in the grommet can be changed to another height and still maintain that convenient location for use with the infant even with the infant bed tilted to the various angles. In addition, as a secondary advantage, the use of the present grommet can be used to position a plurality of wires and tubes to pass through the sides of the infant apparatus at vertical separations and thus avoid creating a bundle of mixed wires and tubes at the bottom of the vertical slit.
Accordingly, with the grommet of the present invention, the advantageous properties of having a vertically aligned slit for introducing and positioning wires or tubes to pass through a wall are present but in addition, a tube to the infant can remain in a desired location despite tilting of the infant bed and, additionally, the various myriad of wires and tubes can be selective separated into particular groups designated by the user, thus, the user can locate all of the tubes at one location supported by one of the thickened ridges while having the wires spaced from that group of tubes and supported at another of the thickened ridges. Additionally, with the use of the present invention, the user can selectively choose a vertical position for the tubes or wires to facilitate a particular position of the infant or tilt angle of the infant bed.
These and other features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent during the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the drawings herein.